Note for a Planned Article
"Creel, Lippmann, and the Origins of American Public Diplomacy"
(comments welcome; draft, not for citation)
(comments welcome; draft, not for citation)
In a Foreword to a 1930 book (Spreading Germs of Hate) critical of U.S. propaganda during the Great War written by George Sylvester Viereck, a pro-German U.S. propagandist during WWI, Woodrow Wilson confidant Colonel House underscores -- over a decade after The War to End All Wars -- the pernicious effects of propaganda, including American propaganda :
But the whole terrible thing called war is cruel, and is exaggerated, if that is possible, by inflaming the imagination by propaganda which regards neither facts nor truth. I recall a conversation with President Wilson on this subject. He earnestly hoped the United States would be spared of this evil that usually follows a declaration of war. He did what he could to inform America upon the real issues at stake and the high reasons there were for our participating in the World War. But his efforts were futile. As soon as our people were asked to purchase Liberty Bonds, which were issued in unprecedented quantities, as many lurid stories were told by our patriotic orators, and as many ghastly cartoons were printed, as were to be found in Europe.
--Edward M. House ("Colonel House"), Foreword, p. vi in Sylvester Viereck, Spreading Germs of Hate (1930).
Viereck writes in his above-cited book (pp. 164-167):
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Note: I have found no mention of House's revealing Foreword (which did not appear in the second edition of Viereck's book) in the literature I have read thus far in preparation for the above planned article. Despite having supported Creel as chairman of the Committee on Public Information, House seems quite repentant about the whole USG propaganda enterprise, while praising in his Foreword how "calmly" and "fairly" Viereck writes about this topic.
Born in Munich in 1884, and brought to America by his immigrant father Louis in 1897, Viereck -- a poet, editor, and publisher -- "launched," as the bio (George Sylvester Viereck: Poet and Propagandist by Neil M. Johnson) added to the finding aid to his papers at the University of Iowa notes,
There is an 2013 article by Lisa Lampert-Weissig on one of Viereck's earliest
![]()
works, House of Vampire: "The Vampire as Dark and Glorious Necessity in George Sylvester Viereck's House of the Vampire and Hanns Heinz Ewers' Vampir," in Samantha George and Bill Hughes, ed., Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present Day, Manchester University Press. See.
Viereck writes in his above-cited book (pp. 164-167):
When the break with Germany came, the men associated with The Fatherland [the weekly magazine Viereck edited during WWI], even for a short time, found themselves outlawed and outcast. ...
Except for a short reference his name disappeared from Who's Who in America for twelve years. ...
The editor of the Fatherland was never "indicted" or "arrested." His office was never "raided." His papers were never "seized." Those facts, however, did not percolate through the thick layer of propaganda which coated the consciousness of the average American.
Viereck image (1922) from
Note: I have found no mention of House's revealing Foreword (which did not appear in the second edition of Viereck's book) in the literature I have read thus far in preparation for the above planned article. Despite having supported Creel as chairman of the Committee on Public Information, House seems quite repentant about the whole USG propaganda enterprise, while praising in his Foreword how "calmly" and "fairly" Viereck writes about this topic.
Born in Munich in 1884, and brought to America by his immigrant father Louis in 1897, Viereck -- a poet, editor, and publisher -- "launched," as the bio (George Sylvester Viereck: Poet and Propagandist by Neil M. Johnson) added to the finding aid to his papers at the University of Iowa notes,
The Fatherland, a weekly magazine to present the German side and to promote strict American neutrality. Beyond that, he agreed in the fall of 1914 to assist German propagandists sent to the United States to promote sympathy for the German cause. Serving in what he later admitted to be a "propaganda cabinet," he accepted German money in printing hundreds of thousands of pamphlets and booklets as well as his journal. ...
[I]n the 1920's he wrote articles reflecting sympathy for Hitler and Ludendorff on the one hand and displaying deep respect for Shaw, Freud, and Einstein on the other. He became in this period the chief American spokesman for the ex-Kaiser in Holland. He also interviewed Hitler in early 1923 and published the interview in his own journal after several newspaper editors turned it down as not newsworthy. At that time he concluded, "If he lives, Hitler for better or for worse, is sure to make history." ...
Viereck serv[ed] as a publicist or propagandist for Nazi Germany after Hitler's rise to power. Except for Nazi anti-Semitism, which he mildly criticized and rationalized as peripheral to the movement, he sympathized with what he believed was the Nazi Party's rightful objective of restoring Germany to a place of honor and equality of power among the great nations of the world. ...
Viereck ... carried on important correspondence with Edward M. (Colonel) House in the 1930's, and these letters are located in the House papers at Yale University.One more note:
There is an 2013 article by Lisa Lampert-Weissig on one of Viereck's earliest
image from
works, House of Vampire: "The Vampire as Dark and Glorious Necessity in George Sylvester Viereck's House of the Vampire and Hanns Heinz Ewers' Vampir," in Samantha George and Bill Hughes, ed., Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead from the Enlightenment to the Present Day, Manchester University Press. See.